Proximity
by 75th
Summary: Recursive fic / altfic of Chapter 85 of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. The opposite of "Innocence" by linkhyrule5. The narrative version of a Reddit post where I theorize about the most likely outcome of Harry attacking Azkaban.
1. Part 1

A piercing cry split the night, echoing from the rooftops of Hogwarts.

The approaching creature trailed fire as it flew, shedding golden flames like sparks from its feathers as the mighty wings beat and beat again. Even as it swooped up in a great curve to hover a few paces away from Harry, even as the flames surrounding its passage diminished, the creature seemed no dimmer, no less bright; as though some unseen Sun shone upon it and illuminated it.

Great shining wings red like a sunset, and eyes like incandescent pearls, blazing with golden fire and determination.

The phoenix's beak opened, and let out a great caw that Harry understood as though it had been a spoken word:

_COME!_

Not even realising, the boy stumbled back from the edge of the rooftop, eyes still locked on the phoenix, his whole body trembling and tensed, his fists clutching and releasing at his side; stepping back, stepping away.

The phoenix cawed again, a desperate, pleading sound. It didn't come through in words, this time, but it came through in feelings, an echo of everything that Harry had ever felt about Azkaban and every temptation to _action_, to just _do_ something about it, the desperate need to do something _now_ and not delay any longer, all spoken in the cry of a bird.

_Let's go. It's time._ The voice that spoke came from inside Harry, not from the phoenix; from so deep inside it couldn't be given a separate name like 'Gryffindor'.

All he had to do was step forward and touch the phoenix's talons, and it would take him where he needed to be, where he kept thinking he ought to be, down into the central pit of Azkaban. Harry could see the image in his mind, shining with unbearable clarity, the image of himself suddenly smiling with joyous release as he threw all his fears away and _chose_ —

"But I —" Harry whispered, not even aware of what he was saying. Harry lifted his shaking hands to wipe at his eyes from which tears had sprung, as the phoenix hovered before him with great wing-sweeps. "But I — there's other people I also have to save, other things I have to do —"

The fire-bird let out a piercing scream, and the boy flinched back as though from a blow. It wasn't a command, it wasn't an objection, it was the _knowledge_ —

The corridors lit by dim orange light.

It felt like a tightening compulsion in Harry's chest, the desire to just _do_ it and get it over with. He might die, but if he didn't die he could feel _clean_ again. Have principles that were more than excuses for inaction. It was _his_ life. His to spend, if he chose.

_I could do it any time I wanted… …if I wasn't a good —_

"_Go._"

* * *

Harry Potter yelped aloud as he turned from the phoenix, _his_ phoenix, to see the interloper. Albus Dumbledore stood behind him, tears glistening on his cheeks as he met the boy's eyes. Fawkes, on Albus's shoulder, had broken his gaze at the other bird to narrow his eyes at his master when he spoke.

"_What?_" Harry said.

Albus hesitated before speaking again, taking care not to glance at Fawkes. Already he was aghast at his own rashness. This choice above all choices should have been Harry's own. The phoenix was certainly here to take Harry to Azkaban, and there would indeed be chaos if Harry accomplished his goal there. And that was to say nothing of the terrible risk it would be for Harry Potter to accept his phoenix's charge; Harry's mission might or might not be as dangerous as was typical — would the annihilation of a hundred and five Dementors have a three-quarters chance of killing him, when destroying his first had come so effortlessly? — but it was a danger, or else the phoenix would not have come. And the safety of the Boy-Who-Lived was paramount.

But there was more than one kind of safety.

From the beginning, Harry's first year had gone nothing like Dumbledore had expected. When the Sorting Hat had cried "_SLYTHERIN!_" from atop Harry's head, Dumbledore had very nearly broken his perfect record of smiling for the Sorting of every First-Year student during his tenure. And although that had turned out all right in the end, the false Sorting was a portent for the year since then, for the Boy-Who-Lived himself.

While Dumbledore had anticipated Harry Potter's being a horcrux ever since that momentous night, the last Halloween in Britain to be known foremost as Halloween, he'd had no idea what effect it would have on the boy's psyche and personality. But Arabella had consistently reported that he was a normal child, if a bit fuller of Muggle nonsense than she expected, and so Dumbledore had planned for this year — the standard Wizardborn acceptance letter, Minerva's introducing him and his family to magic, his even quirkier than usual Sorting speech — expecting to gain Harry's confidence, take him under his wing, and then eventually, over the course of his Hogwarts career, ready him for his destined and foreseen quest.

But his planning had been for naught, for Voldemort had returned already, and Harry was _not_ a normal child. The fragment of Voldemort's soul within Harry did not merely connect him to the Dark Lord's mind as Dumbledore had hoped, but manifested in Harry's own thoughts and actions. It had not been an eleven-year-old boy who had blackmailed Albus into curtailing Snape's act. In January, when the world had almost lost its only hope to a Dementor, Harry had briefly _become_ Voldemort. And just that day in the Wizengamot, Harry had all too easily assumed his Dark persona and faced down Lucius Malfoy, trying to _convince him_ that he was the Dark Lord.

The Dark Lord blackmailed the Headmaster; the Boy-Who-Lived protected his classmates.

The Dark Lord was brought forth by a Dementor; the Boy-Who-Lived destroyed it.

The Dark Lord confronted his former lieutenant; the Boy-Who-Lived saved his best friend's life.

When Harry Potter faced the real, resurrected Voldemort, who would Voldemort find before him? Would Harry be able to coöpt his Dark side to do good, as he had done before? What voice, either within him or outside him, would he listen to in that crucial moment?

It wouldn't be Albus's, that was abundantly clear; there was no trust there, thanks to the combined influences of the Defence Professor and the horcrux within Harry. And in any case, they didn't speak quite the same language. Harry did love and trust Minerva, but he didn't respect her as he did his mentor, the Defence Professor. There was one language, however, that Albus knew Harry could understand keenly, one voice that he knew Harry listened to. Indeed, Harry listened to it _too_ well. But that voice might someday be all there was to pull Harry from Darkness, and Albus would not always be there to provide it for him.

There was more than one kind of safety, and there was no point in keeping Harry Potter's body safe if he did not first keep safe the soul of the Boy-Who-Lived.

"It is your own choice, Harry," he said hoarsely. "But for my part… …I say go. Go, and return."

* * *

Harry stared at Dumbledore for a moment longer, then turned away to face the phoenix. He needed to _think_, to process all this in his constituent parts, but that deep, insistent inner voice was the only part of him that was responsive; the rest, if he strained to discern them, were just using Harry's eyes to stare slack-jawed at the new phoenix.

_Some help here?_ Harry thought.

Gryffindor snapped out of his reverie first, and immediately launched into a tirade. _GO what are you waiting for you don't have all night WELL YOU DON'T KNOW THAT YOU DO EITHER_ JUST GO ALREADY YOU KNOW THE ANSWER —

_Guys, I really need some opinions of a different colour right now,_ Harry thought at the others as Gryffindor continued.

Slytherin took a moment to collect himself, then observed: _Dumbledore's telling you to do something would not have been a point in that thing's favour before now._

_It wouldn't necessarily have been against it, either,_ said Hufflepuff.

_We do seem to have trouble with Dumbledore,_ Ravenclaw said absentmindedly. _Didn't you get sidetracked from that topic this afternoon?_

_Well there's no time for that right now,_ thought Harry, _there's a pressing matter and we need a decision that's actually based on brains._

_Everyone here is biased towards our going,_ said Slytherin. _Dumbledore, Gryffindor, Fawkes. Weren't you already thinking that we should stay when Dumbledore interrupted you?_

_Dumbledore let you let the Malfoy family bankrupt you today, specifically to_ keep _you from this quest,_ said Ravenclaw. _And now he's biased towards our going? He must have a really good reason to do a 180° like this._

_Yeah, there's a phoenix now!_ said Slytherin.

_Hasn't Dumbledore's advice to us been about how you_ shouldn't _always act upon the voice of the phoenix?_ said Hufflepuff. _And he's_ still _saying we should go._

_Dumbledore also might want us to go so we can die trying._

_Then why didn't he let us go earlier?_ Hufflepuff objected.

_Because now the loss of Azkaban won't look like his own fault for not stopping us._

_This is getting us nowhere,_ said Ravenclaw. _Should we just ignore Dumbledore altogether and go back to our original train of thought?_

_A fine idea,_ said Slytherin, _so we st —_

Gryffindor suddenly stopped his background badgering and declaimed, _This might be your last opportunity._

_What?_ thought Harry.

_The situation at Hogwarts is getting serious,_ said Gryffindor solemnly. _You lost Draco this weekend, and almost Hermione as well. You don't know who you may lose next. If somehow you lose Dumbledore, you lose Fawkes. If you lose Fawkes, you lose access to Azkaban and your ability to complete this quest in the foreseeable future. And that's if_ you _survive long enough to try._

Harry's breathing quickened. _Before Dumbledore spoke up,_ he thought, _I was about to ask the phoenix to come back in a few months._

_Would it have listened?_ Gryffindor said simply.

Just then, the new phoenix cawed once more. A feeling of urgency, of warning, of time running out — and not about the prisoners in Azkaban, but about the beings on this roof, this very situation. He needed to make a decision _now_.

At that moment, with three manifestations of Gryffindor influencing him, all Harry's goals were reduced to binary digits in his mind's eye. He had three quests of the utmost importance: the first and most important, the elimination of Death; the second, the fight against the malevolent forces inside Hogwarts; the third, the destruction of Azkaban's Dementors. The first was the longest-term, the least certain of success, and probably the least dangerous. For the other two, the possibilities were that he could complete neither of them, one of them, or both of them. He might die in the attempt of either and succeed. He might die in the attempt of the winning his war and fail. But he was almost certain that he wouldn't die in the attempt of harrowing Azkaban and yet fail; if he attempted it, success was almost guaranteed, even if he did die. So the only way to guarantee the success of either was to attempt Azkaban before it was too late.

_And what about Hermione and all my other friends?_ Harry asked himself.

_So far, it seems as though they're only in danger_ because _they're your friends,_ said Ravenclaw. _Our dying in Azkaban is probably as efficient a way as any to get the targets off their backs._

Harry took a deep breath, then set his jaw. He knew that he was letting Gryffindor get the last word, that he was letting his heart get ahead of his brain. But an earlier thought about a similar situation came back to him:

_Human beings can't live like that._

Harry took one more breath, then reached out, grasped the phoenix's talon, and disappeared in a flash of flame.

* * *

"And so it was done," whispered Dumbledore. "So it was done." He wiped his face, steadied himself, then he, too, flashed and disappeared.


	2. Part 2

Auror Li had just gotten back to the Auror's quarters from his last patrol of the night. In thirty-three minutes he would awaken the two sleeping trios, and he and the other five on-duty Aurors would take their places during the night shift. Two months ago he would have been going home for his three days off, but two months ago everything had changed.

Li was the senior Auror on duty now, so he sent the B trio on their last patrol, then sat down at the table with McCusker and Brown.

Right about now Brown would say…

"Wanna play some poker before we hit the hay?"

McCusker didn't quite suppress his groan. Hannah Brown, the newest Auror on Azkaban duty, was _terrible_ at poker. She had no poker face at all, and she forgot the rules far too often. She ruined the game for everyone else. Li missed Bahry, but after February, he couldn't blame Bones for finding some nice desk work for him to fill out his last few months of duty. Bahry had protested, but Bones overrode him. It was things like that that made Li think Bones had more of a heart than she let on.

"I'm pretty tired, Hannah," he said to Brown. "Maybe tomorrow."

Brown seemed sad and disappointed, and McCusker groaned more loudly than before and said "Not _again_." Li gave him a _look_, this was even ruder than McCusker usually —

Then he saw where McCusker was looking. It wasn't at him or at Brown.

It was at their Patronuses. Which had stopped patrolling and were staring intently down toward the pit.

Li swore loudly and knocked his chair over as he leaped up and ran towards the communicator, Brown was looking around with wide eyes and said "What is it? What does that mean?" and Li was just about to hit the button to contact the Ministry —

There was a flash of fire in the middle of the room, and there stood Albus Dumbledore, with Fawkes on his shoulder and a strange look on his face, part worry and part… something else.

"Chief Warlock!" said Li. "I was just about to call for backup. Should I —?"

"I will take care of it," said Dumbledore. He looked at the three Patronuses, then back at Li. Li thought he saw those eyes turn to ice for a split second, but the enigmatic look replaced the cold one in an eyeblink. Then Dumbledore flourished his wand and produced his phoenix Patronus, to which he said "Go to Amelia Bones and say this: 'Come to Azkaban at once, bring your best Aurors with you, but do not be… _overly_ alarmed.'" The silvery phoenix disappeared.

"Chief Warlock?" said Li hesitantly.

"You all might want to come over here and look," said Dumbledore, as he gazed out the window with the remaining Patronuses. There was some kind of light coming in through the window then, and it was getting brighter.

* * *

For the first second, Harry clutched the phoenix with a death grip. He hadn't quite thought through what he was doing when he teleported into the open air above the Dementors' pit. It was only a second, though, before Harry remembered that a phoenix could hold him up with no effort at all; he felt strangely weightless as he grasped the bird's foot.

He looked up and down, trying to gauge his altitude in the moonlight. He was in the centre of the triangle, about halfway between Azkaban's roof and the pit below — perhaps a little lower than halfway. _I need to be closer to the pit,_ Harry thought, and he willed that thought toward the phoenix, but the phoenix didn't descend. Then Harry looked up and yelled over the wind to the phoenix: _"If I'm going to have a shot at surviving this, I need to minimise my effort, and that means going lower!"_

The phoenix cawed loudly, not the defiant shriek he'd once heard from Fawkes, but a strong declaration of _certainty_. The phoenix, it seemed, had its own opinion of the optimum point from which to launch this attack and had done that work for Harry. _Does it want me to encase the whole building in my Patronus? I don't know if I can extend it that far down and maintain consciousness. Does the phoenix know something I don't?_ The phoenix said nothing; it just looked down at Harry, as if to say _"What are you waiting for?"_

_It came and brought me this far,_ Harry thought. _I should probably trust its judgement._ All Harry needed to do, then, was cast the Charm.

Just cast the Charm, and expend his life.

Well, the shadows of Death weren't going to kill themselves.

Harry thought of the prisoners of Azkaban, tortured for months and years and decades, of erasing that torture, and of putting an end to the instruments of that torture, if not the actual torturers themselves, and cried, _"EXPECTO PATRONUM!"_ The human sprang into existence immediately, and then Harry willed it to grow. He was doing it, he was _actually doing it_, he felt alive as he hadn't felt since February, and he poured that life through his arm and into the light, the blazing silver sunlight that burned away only the Darkness, waxing as big and as bright as it had when he had almost given over in February, so he could see nothing but the glowing air around him, and then _brighter._

And that second was when Harry first felt the life leaving him. It felt strange; it didn't hurt, it didn't feel like an injury or an illness. A few years ago, when Harry had first read _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, he had laughed so hard at one passage he had fainted. That hadn't hurt, either; in fact, he had imagined afterward that it might be similar to how some narcotics made you feel. He had just lain back on the sofa in paroxysms of laughter until he briefly whited out and went unresponsive. His parents had witnessed this and been quite concerned for the three seconds it took him to wake up again.

This was like that. No pain, just a very slow, gradual, blissful loss of consciousness.

That was the first thing Harry felt.

The second thing he felt was when his Patronus reached the sides of the building where the prisoners were kept. Just as in February, he could sense each prisoner as they fell under his Patronus's radius, being sheltered from the torture magical Britain had inflicted upon them. His consciousness was waning in earnest, now; he had to hurry up and reach the Dementors before it was too late. He gave his Patronus another push —

And then he felt the third thing. He felt the second time he annihilated the shadow of Death. He felt the first Dementor, floating down there above the pit somewhere, disintegrate as his Patronus encompassed it.

It felt good.

When he had killed the Dementor in January, it had been the first time he had ever cast the True Patronus Charm. The thrill of success, his resolve to protect humanity and end Death itself, the further erasure of his previous Dementation, and the feeling of actually destroying the Dementor had all sort of blended together then.

Now he could feel the destruction of the Dementor separately from those other sensations. And it felt good.

Then another Dementor died. That felt _really_ good. In fact, he wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but he thought he felt _less_ faint…

A third Dementor, and Harry was sure: he was no longer fainting; his life was being _restored._ He stopped increasing the flow to his Patronus for a moment to think. Maybe…

_Maybe it gave something back, as well as taking…_

When he had cast his Patronus strongly in the Azkaban raid, he had expended some of his life. But when he had done the same while destroying a Dementor in January, he had _had some of the expended life returned._ Harry had just killed three Dementors with one casting of the True Patronus, and he now felt invigorated, brimming with life, better than he had felt before he had cast the Charm, better than any time he could recall.

Harry remembered Professor Quirrell telling him that there were more than a hundred Dementors in Azkaban.

And that's when the Boy-Who-Lived began to laugh.

* * *

Dumbledore, three Aurors, and three Patronuses gazed down towards the pit, where a brilliant sphere of silver light was growing, fully obscuring its source.

"Is that… a _Patronus_?" said Auror Brown.

"Indeed it is, Hannah," said Dumbledore.

"Chief Warlock," said Li, "Our Patronuses — the way they're sitting and staring with us —"

"The same happened in February?" said Dumbledore.

"Yes, sir," said Li.

"Yes, so I perceived. It is not yet certain, but I believe the source of that light was present here that day, as well."

"What _is_ the source of it?" asked Brown.

"The Boy-Who-Lived. And his new companion."

The three Aurors spoke at once: "_Harry Potter_'s doing that?" "Who's his companion?" "The _Boy-Who-Lived_ broke _Bellatrix Black_ out of _Azkaban?_"

"Peace. All will become clear soon. I will —"

The Vanishing Cabinet slammed open, and out trod Amelia Bones with her wolf Patronus, followed by a gaggle of other Aurors, a dozen of whom immediately leapt upon broomsticks and darted out the window, only to quickly pull to a halt and stare down at the sphere of light, which was quickly approaching their altitude.

* * *

Amelia had stridden over to the window and gazed down as well, and when all the broomsticks were outside, she tapped the mirror on her belt and said "Aerial units, prepare to fire," then turned to Dumbledore. "Thank you for the alert. In return, I shall allow you to decide whether it will be Killing Curses or Stunning Hexes my Aurors rain upon the source of that light."

"Amelia, it is Harry Potter —"

"_What?_ Oh, very well, then." She drew her wand, pointed out the window, and cried "_Leviosa immobilis!_ Stunning Hexes! Fire!"

Those Aurors who were not completely transfixed by the silvery light aimed toward the indistinct centre of the sphere and cried "_Stupefy!_"

Dumbledore sighed. "It won't help you. Even if you could see him, he has a phoenix with him. He will come willingly, if he can, once his task here is complete."

"A _phoenix_ brought him here? _Another_ phoenix? Did you, did you _procure_ one for him so he could attack the _Ministry?_"

Dumbledore replied coldly: "I do not have the power to '_procure_' a phoenix for anyone, and I would not have so used it if I did. The phoenix came to him of its own accord. I arrived in time to see them leave, and deduced where it would take him."

Amelia hesitated, then nodded. "Is there any danger to anyone here? I assume not, based on your standing around watching it happen."

Dumbledore shook his head and said "No danger to any person save Harry himself, if you follow my advice. The Aurors were for the prisoners, not the intruder; in a few moments you should send them in pairs to guard the most powerful prisoners capable of wandless magic. In the meantime, I suggest you watch these last moments, and enjoy them, if you can bring yourself to."

Amelia frowned, but then turned to look out the window. The light was level with the window now, and seeping into the room through the floor and inner wall —

Suddenly veins of colour appeared around and amidst the silver glow, oranges and yellows and reds, long straight ribbons of fire appearing and disappearing, streaking toward the centre of that bright silver light.

"Don't let them touch —!" cried Amelia, before one of them passed directly through her torso, causing a pleasant warming sensation and absolutely no pain. Apparently Dumbledore was right.

The glow grew faster then, and before Amelia could order her Aurors to use the streaks of light to help them aim, it had encompassed them all, and all she could see was silver light turning distinctly orange, punctuated by multiplying fiery rays….

* * *

Harry Potter felt everything his Patronus touched. Each prisoner waking up from his years-long stupor, each Auror looking down from above, each Dementor for the last half-second of its existence. He felt the Aurors' Patronuses and knew them — badger, anteater, dachshund, wolf — and he felt Fawkes on Dumbledore's shoulder.

Harry floated there in bliss, his body blazing with its own phoenix fire in the centre of the expanding Sun, until he knew no Dementors remained. He also knew that he couldn't cleanse the whole Earth from here, or even any other nearby land masses; he had done more than anyone had ever done, but one hundred and five was still very, very finite.

He thought at the phoenix: _Can you teleport me somewhere else? Take me to where there are more Dementors?_ The phoenix softly cawed in the negative, as Harry had expected.

Harry was tempted to just stay like this for a while, revelling in what he'd accomplished. But with no more Dementors to feed his Patronus, it wouldn't be all that long before he was in danger again.

So Harry concentrated, and instinctively channeled his excess life energy down his arm, into his wand, and out of his body. He saw the opaque, orange-silver air flare to white around himself; the whiteness rippled outward in a spherical shell, banishing the radiant glow from the inside out, fading as it expanded into the night.

* * *

Amelia Bones, despite herself, gasped at the sensation of that last wave of the spell passing through her. She glanced around and could see that everyone else except Dumbledore had the same slack-jawed, blissful expression.

She peered down toward the origin of the spell. What it left at its centre looked for just a moment like a single creature, a fiery chimera that seemed to flicker as she looked; but within seconds, the lower half was fading into mere substance, while the top half remained distinctly a phoenix.

She looked around at the Aurors and Dumbledore, then gasped a second time when she realised that all their Patronuses were gone. Their Patronuses were gone, and she still felt incredible.

"He destroyed them, didn't he?" she asked Dumbledore.

Dumbledore spoke gravely: "Send the Aurors to guard the prisoners, Amelia, then bring Mr. Potter to the highest cell on the A spiral. I need to speak to him alone."

* * *

Harry Potter sat smiling, with tears on his cheeks, in the highest prison cell in Azkaban. Director Bones had led him there, saying only that there he would remain until the Ministry could decide what to do with him.

The implied threat of a prison sentence had very little effect on Harry. He had been mentally prepared for the possibility, he had just turned Azkaban into a mere building, and…

…and the phoenix hadn't left when Harry finished his mission. It had flown him to the Aurors' station at the top of Azkaban, and it had sat on his shoulder as he walked the short distance to the cell. Slowly the realisation dawned on him that it wasn't _going_ to leave, ever, unless he asked it to.

He had passed the test; the phoenix was his.

The part of his brain that couldn't help it was feverishly calculating all the things he would ask the phoenix, all the experiments he would perform with its powers. But the greater part directed Harry to just sit there smiling and crying for a little while, basking in the warmth. Harry didn't think anything could spoil his good spirits right then.

Then the cell door clinked open, and Dumbledore walked in.

* * *

Albus saw the joy on Harry Potter's face when he entered the cell, and he saw it crack when Harry saw the look on Dumbledore's own face. Someday, he would tell Harry how much he hated spoiling this moment; they should have shared in the joy of the phoenix, he should have been able to tell Harry everything Harry wanted to know about having one.

But Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres, as always, was a complicated case. He would already be in enough trouble for what he had done today; he might be in considerably more when Dumbledore asked what he must ask. So Dumbledore levelled his sternest gaze at Harry, and added this moment to his long, long list of regrets.

* * *

The look on Dumbledore's face was almost as cold as, yet altogether different from, any look Harry had ever seen from the Defence Professor.

He was very solemn when he spoke: "You have a phoenix now."

Harry nodded, and said "I wanted to ask you, how —"

"We will speak later of the phoenix's mastery. For now, we have a great deal else to discuss. To begin with, tell me: Would you have accepted your phoenix's charge had I not intervened on the tower?"

"I don't think so," said Harry after a hesitation. "I was about to ask it to return in a few months when you spoke."

"I see. You have greatly desired a phoenix ever since you met Fawkes, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then you surely agree that you owe me a debt."

Harry's eyes widened for the briefest of moments. "I suppose," he said, with a barely perceptible quaver in his voice.

"You will certainly further agree that you will owe me even _more_ of a debt if I can manage, and decide, to transport you beyond the wards of Azkaban, to where you can utilise your phoenix's full power."

"Yes," said Harry, who was now looking a bit coldly himself.

"Very well. Then you may discharge that debt by giving me, _immediately_, an exhaustive account of your and the Defence Professor's whereabouts and actions on Saturday the eighth of February this year."

Harry took a breath, then said "Headmaster, I already told you —"

A shockwave blasted Harry's senses, deafening without sound, blinding without light, discomforting without pain, and Harry's limbs went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head for a moment as he recovered. Harry slowly regained control of himself, blinking a few times, and by the time his eyes were able to focus on Dumbledore again, he had started visibly panting.

Dumbledore's voice was level when he spoke: "I must apologise; I would have spared you that demonstration if I had realised it would cause you to miss the cries these two phoenixes just produced at your deception.

"Harry Potter, it was out of respect for you and a desire to trust you that I did not forcibly view the contents of your mind that day. You may be an Occlumens, but you are still a new Occlumens, and if I am not terribly mistaken, you haven't had much practice lately. A skilled Legilimens can attack an Occlumency barrier and cause you significant distress even if he fails to fully penetrate it. And though you may manage to break eye contact with him, imperfect Occlumency will not help you if he decides to _force_ you to look him in the eye again."

Harry's breathing was still ragged, his eyes still wide, but he said nothing.

Dumbledore sighed. "I don't wish to do that, Harry, even now that I have seen evidence indicating that you have been to Azkaban before. But Bellatrix Black is vital to Voldemort's plans, and so she is equally vital to your quest against him, regardless of who else was involved. And as you have just converted Azkaban from a torture chamber into a mere prison, you should now have less to fear from anyone you care about being kept here.

"I am sorry to give you an ultimatum, Harry, but I will do what I must: If you tell me the full truth, I will do everything I can, keep it secret from whomever I must, to return you to Hogwarts. But I am not the only one who has seen that evidence, and I will not be able to protect you if we do not resolve this _now._"

Harry was breathing rapidly and his stomach was churning. Quickly his mind enumerated all the competing pressures upon it: _It's clearly time to lose — but Professor Quirrell will be fired — that's guaranteed anyway — but they'll try to arrest him — but they won't succeed — they might if Dumbledore's with them — but he'll go to prison — "prison" won't kill him anymore — but I gave my word not to tell —_

Into the maelstrom, Harry's phoenix softly cawed.

_— but everything Dumbledore said is right. Everyone will already know I was here before. I don't have time to concoct a foolproof story that omits Professor Quirrell. Bellatrix Black can be returned here safely, too, if she can be found. And in the end, I'm a criminal, and I got caught, and it's time to lose, promises be damned._

Harry took a moment to be sure he, and not just the phoenix, actually agreed with the whole line of thought. Then, looking down at his hands, unable to lift his eyes to meet Dumbledore's, he began to speak.

* * *

Dumbledore let Harry speak. He had been in enough similar situations, and he knew enough of Harry's knack for the impossible, that he instinctively took conscious control over his face, his movements, and his breathing, so as not to give anything away by his reactions.

Dumbledore was lucky to have his instincts, because when Harry described the end of the Defence Professor's battle with Auror Bahry, it was all he could do not to scream.

The Defence Professor was Voldemort.

The Defence Professor was Voldemort.

Voldemort was in Hogwarts, had been there the whole year, teaching the children, influencing them, with a body and the full power of a professor —

The Defence Professor was _Voldemort?_

So many questions — so many things didn't make sense —

the Defence Professor was _David Monroe_ — no, he must have killed him during the War and then pretended to pretend to be him —

he'd had a million opportunities to kill Harry — no, he must still be unable to, so he tried to gain him as an _ally_ —

he trained the children to fight, they would be much better equipped to defend against a second reign of terror — but not if his strategy were completely different this time —

but _Voldemort is pure, inhuman evil_, without the capacity to understand anything else, not even the sardonic pessimism of the Defence Professor…

…But no. Tom Riddle, more than anything else, was a genius. In the end he had turned that genius toward unimaginable horror. Dumbledore had always thought that his lust for immortality had driven him to create multiple horcruxes, and that his soul, halved and halved and halved again, had degenerated to the point where all he knew or could ever know was bloodlust.

But the Defence Professor…. The Defence Professor was certainly not a paragon of goodness. He was certainly Dark to some extent. But he was _ambiguously_ Dark. He had unknown, elusive goals. He seemed _complex_; not just capable of complex, ingenious schemes to do evil like Lord Voldemort was, but complex in _himself,_ complex as a person.

If that person were Lord Voldemort, if the entire persona of Lord Voldemort had been a pretence, it meant that Tom Riddle was _altogether_ different from what Dumbledore thought he was. What was he, if he wasn't Voldemort? Was he somehow even more depraved than the world had thought when he was flaying children alive? Or was there something in his core, something never hinted at before, that could still be redeemed? Did he even have a core anymore? If not, what drove him to act at all?

"Headmaster?"

Dumbledore focused on Harry; he had not even heard the last part of his story. Dumbledore cleared his throat softly. Harry didn't seem to realise what had distracted him, and he knew he mustn't give any clue of who the Defence Professor really was, in case Voldemort could read his thoughts that specifically. But there was one question, above all, that Dumbledore couldn't help but find an answer to: _Why didn't this brilliant child, who guessed his own life's story his first day in Diagon Alley,_ realise _that the man he had a strange magical connection to must be Lord Voldemort?_

"Harry…." Dumbledore said slowly. "…Have you spoken to anyone else at all about any of this? About the raid on Azkaban, about the motive for Bellatrix's escape, about your magic's resonance with the Defence Professor or your Patronus's possible ability to block the Killing Curse?"

"No," Harry said. "Well, at the beginning of the year I started to tell Minerva about the Defence Professor, but she made —"

"— made you stop talking, on threat of violence, no doubt."

"Yep."

"I see." Dumbledore stood, said "Very well. Thank you for your candour today, Harry," and turned to leave.

"Headmaster?" Harry said again.

"It will take time to secure your release from Azkaban," Dumbledore said over his shoulder. "How much time, I cannot say. Take comfort spending time with your phoenix, for now." He half-turned toward Harry then, and tried to put the twinkle in his eyes, despite the panic he felt inside. "I'll try to have you out of here in less time than I spent agonising over Fawkes's name." He winked at Harry, then left.

Amelia stood in the corridor alone. "What did he say?"

Dumbledore didn't answer, instead speaking to Fawkes: "Bring Remus, Alastor, Arthur, and Molly. Meet me outside the wards." Fawkes cawed his assent, then swept from Dumbledore's shoulder and sped off toward the Aurors' station. Then he produced his Patronus, and instructed it: "Go to Remus, Alastor, Arthur, and Molly, and say this: 'Fawkes will be along shortly to bring you all to Azkaban. Harry Potter is here. Remus, keep Harry company if he wants it. Everyone else, guard him and don't let him know you're there. Pair off with Aurors, guard the roof above, the cell block below, and the interior wall from outside. Everyone mount a broomstick before you leave with Fawkes. Hopefully none of this will be necessary, but be vigilant until you hear from me again.'"

"_What in the name of Merlin_ did the boy tell you?" Amelia yelled.

"That none of us ever knew anything about Voldemort," Dumbledore replied as he withdrew the broomstick he had just started keeping in his mokeskin pouch. "Guard Harry with your best Aurors. I hope to return shortly."

"Do you need help?"

"I don't believe so. And if I do, it's unlikely that any help would be sufficient."


	3. Part 3

The Defence Professor let the door to his quarters swing shut after returning from his visits with the Weasley twins and Granger. The former visit had been far more fruitful than the latter, though the latter at least still meant an end to an annoying distraction. He regretted the necessity of what came next for the obstinate girl, but her exasperating, dangerous combination of naivety and cleverness would not allow him to protect both her and himself. _If_ —

A sharp change in the boy's mood up above. He was suddenly _very_ alert, and tense. The Defence Professor furrowed his brow, and willed his amazing, _incredibly dangerous_ new device to appear before him, as he spoke: "IsolemnlyswearthatIamuptonogood." He felt a twinge of annoyance at the incantation; the act of assuming four Gryffindors' ignorant perception of "good" was distasteful, no matter how perfunctory the act or how ironic the perception.

The foolish pronouncement of the map creators' identities dissolved from the parchment. The ink quickly flitted about the page, rearranging itself to depict the first sub-level of the castle Hogwarts. At the centre of the map he saw the dot representing himself, captioned with a line of indecipherable markings; 'QUI' was legible on the left, and 'ELL' on the right, with gibberish in the middle where several names were printed over one another. He was lucky that his original name was his shortest, and his present one his longest.

He willed the parchment to zip out to arm's length, where he could see the top of the astronomy tower, and then moved it toward himself a small bit so the Ravenclaw tower came into focus. There were four dots on the tower, standing in pairs. Dumbledore and Fawkes were to the south. And to the northwest stood Harry Potter and someone Hogwarts did not know, labeled only with a question mark, next to which appeared a pawprint symbol — _ah, so a_ magical creature _Hogwarts does not know. What could_ —

_Oh. Oh, Merlin,_ no.

If Dumbledore's acquiring Fawkes was a typical example, the way one acquired a phoenix was to choose to embark upon a dangerous mission where you intended to act alone against "Darkness". And the Defence Professor knew exactly what mission the boy would have in mind — he even agreed with the "Dark" assessment. The phoenix would take him to Azkaban, and Dumbledore would follow him, and the boy would cast his unique Patronus, and the Aurors would be alerted the same way they had been alerted in February, and Dumbledore would see the connection between the two events with his own eyes, and then Dumbledore would question the fool boy, who would no longer need to fear for his mentor's life —

The whole chain of events wasn't a certainty. But the one thing he could not risk in his current state was a direct confrontation with Dumbledore; it was clearly time to take precautionary measures. So the Defence Professor of Hogwarts, still Disillusioned from his walk through the castle, caught the door in mid-swing, grabbed the map and so Disillusioned it, stepped out into the corridor, levitated himself with a thought, and flew through the castle toward the entrance, all while staring at the map with barely a blink.

He tried sending an impulse to deny the phoenix, to postpone his mission, to take the safe option, but he had always failed at such attempts to influence the boy. And just as he reached the corridor to the Entrance Hall, the first part of the Defence Professor's suppositions were confirmed: Harry Potter and the new phoenix disappeared from the Ravenclaw tower, and he could feel that the boy was now many miles to the east. Within twenty seconds, Dumbledore and Fawkes disappeared as well.

At the Defence Professor's touch, the front gate unlocked and opened wide enough to admit a person, then shut and locked behind him as he flew across the grounds toward the Hogsmeade road. He felt the boy start to faint, and thought for a moment that his death might then be the best possible outcome, but not long after that he felt his recovery and subsequent surge of triumph.

He reached the start of the Hogsmeade road, which was the edge of the Hogwarts wards, willed one of the Portkeys out of his mokeskin pouch, grabbed it with one hand, and broke it with a thought. Then he sat down against the nearest tree in that unremarkable section of Norwegian forest.

The Defence Professor knew what his next move was, should he be forced to abandon his original plan; it had been calculated years ago. It was _not_ ideal, and it would make his next few months far more difficult than they would have been, but it was accounted for, and so there was no need to plan or calculate avenues of action; he needed only to find out which ones were necessary. So he continued staring at the map, which again showed Hogwarts's first basement level.

Less than half an hour later, Dumbledore and Fawkes appeared at a corridor a good distance from his quarters. A small hesitation, and they reappeared just outside his door. Another hesitation, and they reappeared inside his bedroom. The parchment floated out to where he could see the third-year Gryffindor boys' quarters. Where Dumbledore and Fawkes then appeared.

The former Defence Professor of Hogwarts let the parchment fall to the ground and took a deep breath. Part of him, a part that was as weak as he had wanted the world to believe Lord Voldemort had been, yearned to destroy something, to unleash a burst of destructive magic, to level and burn a vast swath of forest with a thought.

But he was not that weak. He was in control. He was the master of his destiny, which was to save himself and the world from its great enemy. No one would take up his wand if he laid it down, and he, the saviour of all humanity, would _not_ be beholden to such useless and extraneous instincts.

He thought of Harry Potter, then. A boy with limitless potential — as limitless as his own, for he had imparted it to him. A boy who could rise to defeat him, or to conquer for him. A boy he could not touch, figuratively or literally. He did not feel fondness at all, so he did not feel fondness for Harry Potter, and yet he did feel a _kinship_ with him. The boy's mind was partly his own, and he had thought that meant Harry Potter could have grown into something like a true peer.

But that was folly after all. The boy's mind was _dilute_. He had spent too much time among Muggles, and would never grow to employ the proper criteria when making decisions.

And so tomorrow the world's _true_ saviour would have to start from scratch, with a new plan and a new body. It was time to rest, to let the remnant of his host's consciousness return to the fore for a final time, and so maintain the body's life for one more day. As he started to drift away, he allowed himself one moment to partake in vain regret: _Merlin_ damn _it, I was_ so close.

It was a bitter, bitter voice that whispered "Mischief _managed,_" and then the body of Quirinus Quirrell collapsed in torpor.


End file.
